The Origins of the 1930 Penny.

[fred lever]

Hi, I have not started on recognising the 7 obverse dies that were used in the two 1930 striking runs!
I have done a lot of work on the 1931 pressing run and have bits of information here and there about the obverses but have not got my head around it or tied any of it together. As 7 obverse dies were used and they may have come from different root hubs there is no reason to be surprised to find differences. As I go along I will bring myself up to speed with the obverse geography and understand better what obverse I am looking at. As for "genuine" well, I had my  test points in that article some years ago that sorted out the sheep from the goats as far as the reverse went. All I can say at the moment is that 1930 pennies have been validated with both "Indian" and "English" obverses (for want of a better term) just like the 1931 have but not described as having an obverse from a certain root hub derivation. There's a lot more work to be done. I don't think I answered your question, sorry!
Fred.

[Basil]

I notice IAG has a "6 pearls" 1930 up for Auction on Sunday.I think this is the same Coin they listed a few years ago.

http://www.iagauctions.com/pba/index.php?fcategory=all&fgrade=all&festimate=5&submit=%C2%A0Search

[fred lever]

Ta Basil, I'll have look at it and see if I recognise it.
Fred.

Had a look, nice coin, bit of a scratch there on the King, about VF grade have not seen it before.
Fred.

[stevo1962]

I notice IAG has a "6 pearls" 1930 up for Auction on Sunday.I think this is the same Coin they listed a few years ago.

http://www.iagauctions.com/pba/index.php?fcategory=all&fgrade=all&festimate=5&submit=%C2%A0Search

Don't think it's a gradable coin with that scratch so the estimate is way
too high IMO

[Basil]

Don't think it's a gradable coin with that scratch so the estimate is way
too high IMO

Yeah,they really push the value/grade for high end Coins hoping someone will bite.

They had a real good one around 2011/12,listed as Circulated/Aunc.(or something like that) with an estimate of around A$50,000(?) but it was withdrawn for sale for some reason.Didn't show in Google.

There are 2 1930's listed,i thought Fred might want to copy the Pics. for his records.

[fred lever]

Thanks Basil, done that have accumulated about 50 images so far!
Fred.

[wwwww]

Don't think it's a gradable coin with that scratch so the estimate is way
too high IMO

Yeah,they really push the value/grade for high end Coins hoping someone will bite.

They had a real good one around 2011/12,listed as Circulated/Aunc.(or something like that) with an estimate of around A$50,000(?) but it was withdrawn for sale for some reason.Didn't show in Google.

There are 2 1930's listed,i thought Fred might want to copy the Pics. for his records.

They actually estimated it at $500,000 and called it the finest known. I'd say $50,000 is closer to the mark for that coin, I wouldn't have paid $50,000 for it but someone might have.

[autocoupler]

All I can say at the moment is that 1930 pennies have been validated with both "Indian" and "English" obverses 

From my reading on the subject, I think it's extraordinary that the known London obverse coins only number two or three, but at least two of these grade around gVF or slightly better. Have no idea what the third coin grades at, or if indeed there are others, but when you consider the small number of higher grade coins among the much larger population (1500?) of Indian obverse 30's, how is it that such a small population of London obverse 1930 pennies grade so high? 

If there were more out in the pond, surely they would have been recognised for what they are by now!

Any thoughts?

[Mister T]

Hm, hard to say - the statistician would say that it's probably too small a sample size to read anything into it, but how long was it until it was known that there were two obverses? Probably they were pulled from circulation as regular 1930 pennies and it was just lucky they were better than average.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are more out there that people are being tight-lipped about though. I assume the London obverse was discovered in the 1960s (if not that decade then certainly one when news spread more slowly) - it wouldn't have been hard for a keen-eyed collector to buy up a few before they were common knowledge.

[Basil]

I wouldn't be surprised if there are more out there that people are being tight-lipped about though. I assume the London obverse was discovered in the 1960s (if not that decade then certainly one when news spread more slowly) - it wouldn't have been hard for a keen-eyed collector to buy up a few before they were common knowledge.

As i posted previously the Coin/Stamp Dealer we had for a Period a Week at High School around 1964-1968 said Overseas Dealers Dealers,particulary large USA based ones,had their agents buying up 1930 Pennies during those years.Why more don't show up at PCGS i can't explain,perhaps they didn't get as many Coins as Local Dealers believed as the cat was well and truly out of the bag on the rarity of the 1930 by the mid to late 1960's.

[ausjack]

Maybe in a few years a few more sleepers might emerge as older collectors pass but then a few might get scrapped as not all family members carry on collecting and just get rid of what has taken someone years to gather. Mum ask the other day what she should do if anything happened to me and I told her to contact a few of the forum members as their numbers are in my phone and I'll have to tell my brother as well and in a few years tell his kids as they're the one's that will end up with all my stuff. Sorry for going off track but it was just a thought on sleeper and how many 1930's might be still out there.

[nealeffendi]

Hm, hard to say - the statistician would say that it's probably too small a sample size to read anything into it, but how long was it until it was known that there were two obverses? Probably they were pulled from circulation as regular 1930 pennies and it was just lucky they were better than average.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are more out there that people are being tight-lipped about though. I assume the London obverse was discovered in the 1960s (if not that decade then certainly one when news spread more slowly) - it wouldn't have been hard for a keen-eyed collector to buy up a few before they were common knowledge.

If that were possible it would require that collector to visit just about every auction during the 1960s plus visit the dealers and swap meets on a regular basis to only miss the 3 known examples (plus any still not detected in collections).
Now it is possible that the bag with the 1930 English in it were all sent to a country town and thus they never ended up being circulated as much as they would in the city. Might even be an old collection in that district with a few examples of the English and if the original collector passed them on to someone who wasn't a collector (but retains them as a memento of their late father/grandfather) then the collection might not have been looked at in the past 50 years.
For example 2 months back I purchased a nice 1920 ./ English off a couple about to go grey nomading and they had retained that collection tucked away for decades as the relative who left it to them had collected it in regional NSW where he was living back in the 1940s. They were not collectors but had retained the coins and other stuff (like mineral samples) as heirlooms and were only selling as they had nowhere to store coins in the caravan they were preparing.

[wwwww]

All I can say at the moment is that 1930 pennies have been validated with both "Indian" and "English" obverses 

From my reading on the subject, I think it's extraordinary that the known London obverse coins only number two or three, but at least two of these grade around gVF or slightly better. Have no idea what the third coin grades at, or if indeed there are others, but when you consider the small number of higher grade coins among the much larger population (1500?) of Indian obverse 30's, how is it that such a small population of London obverse 1930 pennies grade so high? 

If there were more out in the pond, surely they would have been recognised for what they are by now!

Any thoughts?

Yeah I wonder about that, pennies have quite a high survival rate especially so considering the 1930 penny was known for over 2 decades before they were withdrawn so even if we put the survival rate at 50%, that means 3 surviving examples, possibly another 5 at most not discovered (as in 1930 pennies which are known but never checked if they were London die) meant that approx. 16 were struck - I wonder why so few would be struck?

There are other examples of this but we rarely get to know the stories behind them unlike US coins where the mints seem to have kept much better records.

[autocoupler]

It's true that accurate record keeping in the past would solve many mysteries. I wonder if as you say wwwww, for whatever reason a small mintage of London obverses were minted and released much later, or even well after the 1930 penny gained universal notoriety. It could explain why they would have been plucked from circulation still with plenty of meat on the bone?

[Mister T]

If that were possible it would require that collector to visit just about every auction during the 1960s plus visit the dealers and swap meets on a regular basis to only miss the 3 known examples (plus any still not detected in collections).

Could have been known about earlier than the 1960s - I'm sure even today there are varieties of coins that few know about and who a handful are snapping up without anyone noticing.
Most examples ending up in some out-of-the-way place is definitely a possibility though - did any other countries use Australian coins in the 1930s or 1940s? Possibly a lot got sent to New Zealand in the 1930s (before they got their own bronze in 1940) and they ended up getting withdrawn and destroyed.